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Why U.S. Leaders Deceive Their Own People

Professor John Mearsheimer’s latest book, Why Leaders
Lie, provides a number of intriguing insights and surprising
conclusions. Perhaps his most unexpected conclusion is that leaders
lie to foreign leaders far less frequently than is generally
assumed. Indeed, he contends that leaders lie to their own people
more than they do to foreign counterparts. He does, however,
concede that less blatant forms of deception, such as “spinning”
and “concealment” are pervasive in international politics.

Two other conclusions ought to be deeply troubling to
populations in democratic countries, and especially so to
Americans. One is that officials in democratic political systems
are more likely to deceive their own people — even engaging
in outright lies — than officials in autocratic systems. His
reasoning on that point is solid, and he provides compelling
evidence to support his case. Mearsheimer’s thesis is that
democratic leaders are much more dependent than autocrats on public
support for foreign policy initiatives, especially when an
initiative includes going to war. If the available evidence is weak
that a major security threat exists, but political leaders believe
that taking military action is in the national interest, a powerful
incentive exists to inflate the threat to gain badly needed public
support.

A second, related part of his thesis is that political leaders
are much more inclined to lie involving wars of choice rather than
wars of necessity. Again, there are ample historical examples
supporting his argument.

If Mearsheimer is correct, Americans must face the troubling
realization that U.S. leaders will be unusually prone to engage in
lying as well as milder forms of deception to gull their own
populations. Not only is the United States a long-standing
democracy, but it is the nation since World War II that is most
inclined to embark on wars of choice — often involving issues
that have little or no connection to genuine American security
interests. The list of U.S. military interventions just in the
post-Cold War era — Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo,
Iraq (twice), and the extended mission in Afghanistan — is
definitive testimony to that tendency.

America’s status as a democracy and a country inclined to wage
wars of choice is a deadly combination that creates an overwhelming
incentive for political leaders to use whatever techniques of
threat inflation are necessary to stampede an otherwise skeptical
public into supporting the latest dubious military crusade. The
potential corrosive effect on America’s political institutions and
values are all too apparent. At a minimum, Americans ought to be on
guard and doubly skeptical when an administration’s spin machine
goes into action making the case that Lower Slobovia’s mistreatment
of Upper Slobovians really, truly poses a dire security threat that
only U.S. military action can prevent. The American people have
heard such a refrain — and believed it — far too often
for the health of the Republic.